Eons ago, I wrote on this blog that I’d have a Pinterest for Business series. The problem with being a social media strategist and community manager: you end up writing and working all day on client work, so the things here get put to the back burner. I’m incredibly lucky to have a wonderful arsenal of clients to keep me super busy. That being said, I’m going to try to make a little more time to share some tips here.
In the last post, we talked about why Pinterest is great for business (and when I say “business” you could also insert “blog” if that’s your angle.) Today, I’ll give a couple quick tips on how to monitor when other people are pinning content from your website that you might not realize.
Why it’s important to monitor Pinterest:
- Instant snapshot of engaged customers/prospects/fans: You can find active fans/users of your work, who were interested enough to be browsing your site and then share that content with their followers.
- An extra touchpoint: If you can easily see what others are pinning about your or your business, you can instantly give them a “like” on that pin or respond in a comment. It shows initiative and that you’re listening out for them. It also shows appreciation that they took the time to pin your content.
- Totally legit eavesdropping: In keeping an eye on what people are pinning, you may gain insight into how they plan on using your product, what they found most useful, and also what images people are drawn to from your site. It’s not enough information to drive a strong product or website strategy, but it’s good qualitative information to pay attention to.
How to monitor Pinterest:
- Pinterest Source: This is a simple trick. You can use a simple URL that will pull up pins from your site, or any other sites. You can use this to check out what’s being pinned on competitor sites if desired.
The URL is http://www.pinterest.com/source/SITENAME.COM/
(obviously changing out the site name)
This is an example of monitoring my blog, authenticallyemmie.com. From here, I’d go through and like the pins (clicking the heart that appears on hovering over a pin) and make sure I’m following those users.
- PinAlerts: Pinterest tools come and go like crazy, and its inevitable that as soon as I find one I like, it goes away. PinAlerts, however, has been pretty steady and consistent, plus – it’s free! You simply set up an account on pinalerts.com and enter the URLs you want to track. For each URL, you can set the alert time – weekly, daily, as it happens, etc. You’ll be emailed only as frequently as you ask for each site. Even though I periodically check Pinterest via source as outlined above, I love getting these daily snapshots for my blog, or for client sites. It instantly reminds me to go and take care of those pins instead of waiting a longer period of time and then scrolling through a lot more pins.
No matter which of these methods you use, you will see the same content. It all comes down to your delivery preference: do you need a little nudge like myself, or would you rather check it on your own schedule? Either way, happy monitoring!
Questions? Let me know in the comments.